to inherit a throne? She could hardly fail to enter the Wytche, the strange
natural gap between Worcestershire and Herefordshire, by which, at one
step, the wayfarer leaves wooded England behind, and stands face to face
with a pastoral corner of Wales; or to drive along the mile-long common of
Barnard's Green, with the geese, and the hay-stacks, and the little
cottages on either side, and always in front the steep ridge of hills with
the grey Priory where Piers Plowman saw his vision, nestling at their feet;
or to pull the heather and the wild strawberries in Cowleigh Park, from
which every vestige of its great house has departed. She might have been a
privileged visitor at Madresfield, where some say Charles II. slept the
night before the battle of Worcester, and where there is a relic that would
better become Kensington, in a quilt which Queen Anne and Duchess Sarah
embroidered together in silks in the days of their fast friendship.

As it was part of the Princess's good education to be enlightened, as far
as possible, with regard to the how and why of arts and manufactures, we
make no question she was carried to Worcester, not only to see the
cathedral, but to have the potteries exhibited to her. There was a great
deal for the ingenuous mind of a royal pupil to see, learn, and enjoy in
Worcester and Warwickshire--for she was also at Guy's Cliff and Kenilworth.

It had become clear to the world without that the succession rested with
the Duke of Kent's daughter. Long before, the Duchess of Clarence had
written to her sister-in-law in a tender, generous struggle with her
sorrow: "My children are dead, but yours lives, and she is mine too." As
the direct heir to the crown, the Princess Victoria became a person of
great importance, a source of serious consideration alike to the Government
and to her future subjects. The result, in 1830, was a well-deserved if
somewhat long-delayed testimony to the merits of the Duchess of Kent, which
must have given honest satisfaction not only at Kensington, but at